


A Doppleganger Ending

by Intergalactic_Octopus



Series: The Stained Hands Series [4]
Category: Mass Effect, Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Biracial Character, Biracial Zaeed, Depression, F/M, Interspecies Romance, Interspecies Sex, Mental Health Medication/Care, Multi, Non Human Gender Binary, Polyamory, Tw: Child Abuse References
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-07
Updated: 2018-01-04
Packaged: 2019-02-11 13:46:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 21,350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12936555
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Intergalactic_Octopus/pseuds/Intergalactic_Octopus
Summary: When something ends wrong, it leaves weird frays like cutting a piece of fabric the wrong direction. The more you pull at the strings, the more damage you cause. And so you resign yourself to cutting the fabric again to salvage what’s left. Because if you don’t stop this wrong end, this fake end, this dopplerganger’s end, the damage will spread and spread and everything you worked so hard for will be unsalvageable.Even though the Omega-4 Relay mission was a success, it wasn’t the real ending of Katrina Shepard’s adventures as the Commander of a Cerberus colored ship. And she knows it. She can feel it. But unlike fabric, life isn’t kind enough to show her the damage so she can carefully snip it away and get back to normal. But lucky for her, she’s got people in her life that keep her from totally unraveling before it’s too late.Set right after Shepard defeats the Collector and the downtime they have between ME2 and ME3.  Mainly Shepard’s POV but also Thane and Zaeed’s POV chapters.





	1. Depressive Realism

**Author's Note:**

> Previous Fics in the [ Stained Hands Series](https://archiveofourown.org/series/488573)  
> [Stars Make Me Choke](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6891412)  
> [This Time With Feeling](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7207451)  
> [Fear of Possible Nonbeing](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10538688)

_[Time Perception ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_perception)  
_

_Depression may increase one's ability to perceive time accurately. One study assessed this concept by asking subjects to estimate the amount of time that passed during intervals ranging from 3 seconds to 65 seconds. Results indicated that depressed subjects more accurately estimated the amount of time that had passed than non-depressed patients; non-depressed subjects overestimated the passing of time. This difference was hypothesized to be because depressed subjects focused less on external factors that may skew their judgement of time. The authors termed this hypothesized phenomenon "depressive realism.”  
_

 

  
          Life has a funny way of arranging different events in unexpected ways. And no, not in a “Haha, weird how this worked out”- way, but in a “This is so cosmically wrong that it has to be hilarious or I’ll cry” way.

  
          Why was Katrina Shepard so upset after a successful mission? A successful suicide mission at that? The entire crew of the Normandy: engineering, medical, fighters, pilot, the ship’s commander, and even the A.I. were all safe!  They should have gone the way of the colonist and turned to nutrient slurry for whatever monstrous experiments the Collectors, and by extension the Reapers, were conducting on that base. But no, everyone was fine. They even had a safe spot, The Shadow Broker’s, now Liara’s floating fortress, to dock the Normandy for repairs as the energy shields keeping the ship together as well its crew, and more importantly the air and pressure inside, would only last so long with the giant holes punched in its hull from the battle.  

  
          Part of Shepard wondered if what had happened was real. She was there for the fight, she remembered it all. Tucked under biotic barriers to keep Collector Swarms away and fighting a human shaped Reaper fetus… thing, she was there for it all. She could remember every clunk of her metal boots on semi organic floor panels and the smell of heat sinks and burning Collector flesh even through her helmet. She could live an Asari life span and never forget that smell. She remembered the sound of Tali’s panicked voice in the ducts when they took a little too long to open the next gate. Or the orders Garrus barked through the coms to the other team that was set up to cover more ground.

  
          And she remembered Zaeed almost sliding on his belly into oblivion when the Human Reaper made one last strike. How blank her mind went when she dived down to save him. How her gut sank when she missed her best friend’s outstretched hand the first time. His gloved hands slipped through her gloved fingers and she kept sliding down still. She did not think about the chance that she’d fall to her death with him if she missed when he went over the edge.  She wasn’t thinking then. It was all survival instincts and years of commanding under her belt. Years of building trust with her crew and years of regret after the Akuze mission. She’d never leave a man behind if she could help it.

  
          Back on Zorya she asked him to trust her. Trust that she’d have his back and watch out for him because they were a team. She couldn’t betray that trust. At least if they both died, she’d be able to face him in the afterlife, knowing she did all she could to save him if worst came to worst. But that was a realization that came with hindsight. She hadn’t thought of any of those things, other than pulling his ass up out of the literal fire and getting them away from those cursed platforms.

 

          And when the based started exploding, and debris flew in every direction, she remembered that too. On their way out, a beam fell right on top of Thane and she was sure he’d been crushed under its hefty weight. The real-life limitations on her muscles didn’t exist then, nor did she think about how many muscles she’d tear heaving the thing off him. She did it of course. Deadlifted something beyond her normal skill level because her body didn’t exist in that moment. It couldn’t because any reminder of her body created one more limitation to overcome and another hurdle between her exhaustion and what she had to do. And what she had to do was save him from an exploding base in the center of swirling black holes so that his body wasn’t trapped on the event horizon of one of them for all eternity. No one deserved that. Even if Drell didn’t see their bodies that way, Shepard was human. And had died in space once.

 

          If they weren’t so close to a planet when the first Normandy was destroyed, her lifeless body would have been floating amongst the stars until someone collected her. Here though, no one would save him. No one would be able to. The idea of that gave her heart palpitations and a sick empty primal nervousness. An existential dread of death that made her body lock up when she thought of it too long. No. Even if Thane was dying, there was no way she’d ever let him die like that. Even if she’d torn every muscle in her body.

 

          She didn’t need a Drell’s memory to see those images, and gag at those smells and panic over those feelings, for the rest of her life. They were on a constant loop that sat behind her eyelids when she slept or tried to sleep.  The only time she got a reprieve from them was when they were pushed aside by the Prothean Warning Message when her subconscious anxiety wanted to spice up its vid watching schedule in the theater of her mind.

 

          But she had to keep reminding herself that she was alive. And her friends were alive. And her loves were alive. And she sat in the Liara’s ship, sipping cold coffee, and waited for the ships repairs that would cost her nothing. She had to keep reminding herself that THIS was the good ending.  This was the thing you hoped for when the battle was over. But she couldn’t help herself looking at the glass half empty. Was reality really this neat and clean? Even with the memories that would plague her as long as she managed to live, there was an incongruity of it all that would not let her bask in her well-deserved victory. Someone _should_ have died, right? If only to put some balance in the universe. All this good, something bad should have happened in the end. Maybe that’s why she was so uncomfortable? All the negatives that should have come, she’d taken them into her body so that her crew wouldn’t suffer the cosmic consequences of balancing the scales.  

 

_All the people you cared about will live (Unlike your squad mates on Akuze). And you will not be settled in the moment (Like you were after you defeated Saren.) And no one will recognize your achievements (Because you worked with Cerburus, the people that killed your squad on Akuze in the first place.) You’ll suffer by the creations of your own mind and there is nothing you can do about it or say to anyone (Because they will see you as a pessimist.) You’ve survived death missions twice (And came back once), and you should feel grateful for life. But you’ll also stew and wonder if you deserved to live after it all._

 

          Shepard clenched the coffee cup in her hand and tried to focus on Liara, who was typing away at her keyboard without recognition of Shepard’s internal struggles.

 

          It didn’t work.   

 

          Her mind kept wandering. It wouldn’t focus on the world around her. If someone, most likely Cerberus, came in, guns blazing and out for revenge. She wouldn’t notice. It was so hard when her mind only wanted to stay inward and ruminate on her issues.

 

          It all reminded Shepard of an old Earth vid. The vid was made in a time before cross galaxy travel was even conceivable but the philosophies it talked about still held up. (Better than the special effects that’s for sure.) But it played at the ratty dollar theater all the time when she was a kid and she snuck in often to escape the hell of street life. The movie was about machines that enslaved humanity (A fear living life still had) but it wasn’t an enslavement of their bodies like cattle slavery but their minds. Sure, the human’s bodies were trapped in giant contractions that harvested their bodies energy but the A.I.s trapped the human minds in “an artificial world” that was “The real world” as far as anyone knew.  The whole point of the movie was to escape this mental prison the humans were put in and get from under the thumb of their A.I. masters and free humanity from the A.I. programmers of the fake, real world.          

 

          It was a good movie. A little cheesy. But one thing always stuck with her, even after twenty years since the last time she’d seen it.

 

          One of the programs talked about the concept of Paradise. Utopia. A world without stress and horrors. Whatever. They’d said they’d tried to give the humans paradise when they created their artificial world but their minds kept rejecting the perfection. The program said that humans needed strife and they needed to suffer to accept “reality”. As a kid that bothered Shepard only because her life was nothing but suffering. And how she’d accept perfection if it was put on a platter for her in a heartbeat. But then, perfection was just a home with a family that loved her for who she was, and not what they could turn her into.  

 

          But now an adult, and grappling with that very concept, Shepard felt like that idea was true. The end of this mission wrapped up too perfectly. Even the fact that by pure coincidence, she’d made it her mission to help Liara with her Shadow Broker revenge plot before setting off for the Omega-4 Relay, that choice fit too nicely in the grand scheme of it all.  Something bad was going to happen. The bottom would drop out in an “A-hah! Gotcha!” moment where Shepard would just sigh, confirm in her heart that “Of course it was all too good to be true”, and then pick up her sniper rifle to handle the next problem placed in front of her.

 

          Maybe she was in a simulated life like the humans in the vid? She had nothing to contradict this idea.

 

          All the pain she was feeling could have been her mind’s way protecting itself from the knowledge she was in a simulation. Or they could have been fabricated emotions and just pumped into her head by advanced programmers to keep her from questioning the too good reality they accidently created. She could have been trapped within some Reaper tech or still strapped onto the Cerberus operating tables. She wouldn’t hold it past either of them to experiment with such a thing. A fake reality felt just as likely as her actually sitting on Liara’s couch.

 

          Reason being, if this was a dream of her own creation, a number of things would be changed that’s for sure. In her own dreams, Thane would be well and she wouldn’t have to worry about how long they had left together. In her own dreams, they would put an end to the Reapers without breaking a sweat. If she had it her way, she’d have a home of her own and someone to be there waiting for her when she walked through the doors.

 

          Real or imagined life though, defeating the Collectors was just another check mark on an imaginary To-Do list.  

 

√ Stop Saren  
√ Stop the Collectors  
□ Find out where the Reapers are coming from?  
□ Prepare the Worlds for Reaper invasion.  
□ Be ignored. Solve the Problem Yourself.  
□ Die on the Battlefield, a shell and a husk of a soldier, more machine than person, A body only moved by drills and training and the allegiance to the Military that both save and took my life.

 

          Was she missing anything?

 

 

          Live happily ever after was certainly not on the list. Even when her history said that defying the impossible, doing what can’t be done, making a will out of no way, etc etc, had become a personality trait for Shepard, that was just too far-fetched to hope for.

 

          Thane had asked her for her ideal ending to it all. And she placated him with talk about getting a big farm with animals and crops to sell. It was a nice fantasy but she’d never put any real hopes on that being a real possibility. She wouldn’t let herself dream that high for fear that her wax wings would finally melt.

 

          But poetic ideas of reality and simulated lives aside, they didn’t have anything to test that idea. So, she had to accept that this was the only real life. And in this one, she was alive. And she’d make do as she always did. One day at a time. One battle at a time. One step at a time. One breath at a time. And the path she needed to take would form under her feet as she walked.

 

          Sure, it formed out of nothing with no clear sight in front of her. It was like it was in an empty void were one flat stone appeared in front of her feet each time she lifted them.  Only for the stone she’d just stepped from to disappear. No more, no less. No clear path forward and no way to go back. She had no way of knowing where that path would take her because all she saw ahead was darkness and uncertainty. And she surely couldn’t backtrack to fix a mistake or make a different choice.

 

          At this idea though, her mind wandered on another science fiction concept. Time travel. With all the tech they had, they should have been able to go back in time, even a few years. If they found a way, she knew the first thing she wanted to do. She’d put down Saren in Eden Prime before he got the chance to kickstart the monomyth of her life. This wouldn’t change anything as far as the Reaper’s invasions, hell, it would probably push it up on the time scale, but at least she would have removed herself from the story. Nihlus could have lived and he could have been the one to touch the Prothean beacon. And then he’d be the one up at night with the sight of those grotesques images on the back of his eyelids like holograms when he thought too long of their existence.

 

           The idea that she would have never met her current and former crew weighted heavy on her mind though when she thought about time travel but sometimes it felt worth it. Especially at times when sleep wouldn’t come because every muscle and joint on her body hurt and the weight of living pushed down her chest like an old hag, the price was so worth it to stop all the pain. She couldn’t miss them if she didn’t know them. And the idea of them being gone hurt less than the “physical” pain she was in.

 

          Physical in quotes because honestly, she had no idea where the pain was coming from. She’d taken more than enough pain medication until she was in a haze for days and refused to take anymore. Not that Chakwas would give her anymore if she’d asked. The doctor couldn’t find a single physical reason why Shepard was hurting so much. Chakwas chalked it up to just her body settling after all the hell she’d put it through but Shepard didn’t believe that. Not because it didn’t make sense, if all the bruises and battles and bullets were to catch up with her, it would be when she finally had some time for some R&R. But this was uncomfortable, phantom pain. She couldn’t pinpoint where it originated, or even articulate it in words. It made even the skin around her ears tinder and as far as she knew, she hadn’t ear-butted any enemies recently.

 

          Shepard left Chakwas office many times frustrated that the good doctor couldn’t diagnose something wrong with her. There had to be something! But Shepard only asked to be scanned and gave no other explanations to what she was feeling. And when the scanners said clear, she’d leave. It wasn’t Chakwas fault. Shepard knew that. She’d let pride and embarrassment keep her from talking candidly so of course Chakwa’s couldn’t do her job properly. Still, Shepard wanted it to be someone else’s fault. For once the responsibility of finding a solution wouldn’t be on her back.

 

          “You’re awful quiet over there, Shepard.” Liara said and looked up for only a moment from her keyboard before sticking her nose back into more data than anyone should be able to handle. Or had the time. Then again, Liara was an Asari, so she had almost all the time in the universe to read every single piece of data if she wanted to.

 

          “Thinking.” Shepard said, twisting the cup of coffee in her hand and leaned into the deep couch. Part of her wanted to refresh the cold coffee but with sleep already being a luxury, she wouldn’t risk a second dose of caffeine.

 

          “About?” Liara asked, this time she looked up to catch Shepard’s brown eyes and she only shrugged.

 

          She’d been thinking about a lot of things. And none of them were socially acceptable to talk about. She could talk about the philosophies of the movies she’d related her life to or the science fiction concepts she’d thought about but only in an academic sense. She could say:  ‘What are the consequences of time travel to the person traveling, will they forget their old friends or still remember a world without them. Let’s discuss.” but she couldn’t openly relate them to her own struggles.

 

          Shepard blamed her military life for this hang up.

 

          If she was a civilian, this whole conversation would have been a lot easier. So many media campaigns were out that preached about “Caring for your mental health” and the like. She wasn’t against them, but they were mainly aimed for civilians. For some reason that same care wasn’t presented when it came to the military and its people. The Alliance was equal parts progressive in its technological advances but regressive in so many ways. As much as she was a person, she was an asset first. Especially when she first joined on. They cared about her skills, and if she could perform her job with maximum efficiency. Anything less and there were literally hundreds of eighteen-year-old earth rats willing to take her spot. And she sure as hell wasn’t going to lose her way off of Earth to a little thing like emotional damage.

 

          The idea of being “unfit for duty” terrified her, even when she had a few more stars on her chest and technically wasn’t under Alliance rules anymore but still. Habits like that were hard to break.

 

          “Shepard.” Liara said in a tone reserved for a mother than knew her child was lying and Shepard couldn’t help but laugh. And also, it kind of annoyed her. Laugh because the life scale of Asari, Liara was still a young woman, in “dog year” Shepard was older.  But Liara still had over fifty years over Shepard’s in just how long she’d been walking the galaxy. The contradiction of being fussed at by a younger but older woman was funny. But it was annoying to be fussed over like that. Like, Shepard owed anyone a conversation for what was in her head.

 

          Shepard tried to shake the negative feelings out of her head, she knew Liara didn’t mean anything by asking. And that she was concerned about her well-being. But that didn’t stop the aggravated heat in her chest. 

 

          “I’m fine. I’m going to check on the Normandy.” Shepard stood from her sitting position and placed her coffee cup on a near-by table absently. Later she’d wonder where that cup went and be upset that her memory was betraying her. But then, all she thought was that even if Liara was working and not really talking to her, she wasn’t in any mood to be around other people. The very least someone so “young” who couldn’t understand what she was going through.  It wasn’t a healthy thought but a lot of Shepard’s thoughts recently weren’t healthy. It was hard to sift them out.

 

          “I’ll be here if you need me, Shepard.” Liara said, Shepard knew it was true but wasn’t sure what Liara could give other than unlived Asari advice. So, she nodded and headed to wear the Normandy was being repaired. At least with the sound of machines wirring away, no one would try and have a conversation with her.

 

          While she walked, she looked at the newly cleaned walls of the Shadow Broker fortress and wondered how Liara could handle such a big move in her career like that? It must have been an Asari thing. Not many species could just drop one profession for another on a whim.

 

          They could spend a hundred years or so dancing or exploring the galaxy and then maybe in two hundred or so more, start a stable business, run that for another four hundred and switch over to something wildly different.

 

          Liara was an archeologist, that was her passion. So much so that she’d been trapped in a bubble of historical science when they first met. But circumstances made her drop the profession she loved for another that she needed at the time. All with the knowledge that even if she stayed an Information Broker for a thousand years, she still had years ahead of her to pick up her archeology again.

 

          Time didn’t exist for them the same way it did for Humans or most other galactic life. Time existed to them as much as time existed inside a clock. Clocks measured time but couldn’t control it. They just acted like silent observers and watch it pass and keep pace with the present. The same anxiety Shepard felt over not knowing her future path, didn’t exist for Asari. They didn’t have to worry about the past, for them, it was just another thing. And they didn’t need to worry about the future, there was always so much of it left for them to live.  And when they got to old age, there were hardly regrets over wasted time or “Shoulda”, “Woulda”, or “Coulda”’s. There was always plenty of time to do what their hearts desired.

 

          Liara wouldn’t understand what she was feeling, at least that’s how Shepard felt. Even if they defeated the Reapers and Shepard lived another fifty or more years, most of her goods years had been given to breaking her back for the galaxy.  Liara would still be in her prime a millennia after Shepard’s bones turned to dust.

 

          Though, not all longed lived Species were like that, Shepard thought as she passed Grunt in the hallway. She’d have stopped to talk with him but he was deeply engrossed in a conversation with… himself it seemed. Mumbling bitterly about something she couldn’t and didn’t try to understand as he got out of earshot. When she was in a better mood she’d ask what about “Sharks” was upsetting him so much.

 

          Krogan weren’t like that, Shepard thought, and missed Wrex terribly in that moment. They lived a long time, sure, but their label of “galactic terrors” put a strain on the idea of a future. She missed the conversations they’d had over the state of the Krogan on the first Normandy. Whenever work got too stuffy and she needed a break, that’s when she’d sneak down to the bay to get away from responsibility and be among her “alien” crew, and Ashley. (This, more than anything, was probably the reason Ashley, before she passed, got over her strictly “human-first” ideology. You couldn’t hold on to ideas like that when you were surrounded with truly alien personalities. That, and Wrex forced her into arm wrestling matches every time Shepard brought up Ashley’s “tank” status among the crew. Their record was even when she passed. Why couldn’t Cerberus bring her back? Ashley was worth her weight in gold, even if it was just a person to talk to in moments like these.)

 

          But back to Wrex. He was still alive and it was hard to dwell on dead friends too long. Wrex. He’d muse over how lost his people were and how hopeless they’d been to their own destiny. There was an intense anger in his voice when he talked but also these brief moments of exasperation.

 

          “Hell…” Wrex would sigh loudly, running his scaly hand over his big mouth and stare up at the ceiling. “Makes me wish we had shorter life spans. Least then it’d be real to them.”  

 

          “How so?” Shepard had asked. She remembered shifting her weight on the wall and resting her fully blonde hair against it. Her roots now were almost two inches of black hair and frayed blond ends. She’d had more time then to care about things like grooming. And a lot more energy as well.

 

          “You humans couldn’t solve your energy problem, least without a lot of politics mixed in.” Wrex said that day and Shepard cocked her head to the side, curiously. “I did my research. Had to know what type of people you were, case we had to deal with you.” Wrex answered before she got the chance to ask.

 

          She couldn’t blame him. Last time they let a foreign species into their problems, they’d been hit with the Genophage as a punishment for that. Human history was filled with chaos and war and betrayals. As good as people were, the dirty parts of human history were filthy. No more than other species it seemed but it made sense for the Krogan to at least pay notice to another potential enemy. That’s what humans do after all.  

 

          “So, you went into space. Found more land to settle on. Made a lot of folks a lot of money but also solved the overpopulation problem.” Wrex said matter-of-factly, as if the human race and planet Earth hadn’t been on near total meltdown if not for the discovery of the relay behind Pluto.

 

          “What’s that got to do with the Krogan?” Shepard had asked and Wrex smirked back at her.

 

          “Let me finish and I’ll tell you. You young people have no manners.” Wrex was entitled to that statement for sure. When he was born, Human beings were barely understanding their own planet, let alone how to get into space. So she just shrugged, settled in on the wall and let him talk.

 

          “Krogan don’t think like that. None of them have tried to find a spot and settle down off of Tuchanka. None of them want to hang back a century or two, rebuild and breed, and grow. Nothing. I’m old Shepard, not ancient but I’m getting there.” He got quiet at this statement and looked forward. Not at Garrus or the Mako but somewhere beyond the ship’s hull and probably beyond space itself. “They sell themselves off as guns for hire, take a bullet for their employer and never once did they think about maybe having a kid or two. Or trying to save our species, their species, from extinction.”

 

          “Aren’t you a Merc?” Shepard had asked and Wrex gave the second scariest look he’d ever given. The first being when he pointed his rifle at her and threatened to blast her for keeping him from Saren’s “Krogan Cure.” What was it with her becoming friends with scowling mercenaries that pointed guns at her?

 

          “Unlike the rest of those Pyjak I haven’t given up! I know I have time to be angry, to be pissed off at it all but I know have to go back and do what needs to be done! Even if I have to beat every last one of them to get their heads on straight.” Wrex said through gritted teeth and he fell silent, signaling that he’d been done with story time. Even though the ending had been derailed, Shepard got the gist of what he was trying to say, or what she could piece together from context alone.

 

          Wrex wanted his people to see that they had a future. They had time. Just like the Asari. He wanted them to see that they could be more than suicidal gunmen, just drinking and fighting and only thinking that they had nothing to live for.  Genetically yes, they were headed for a slow death but individually, they had time beyond measure to help their people grow and repair the damage if they worked together. But the damage was so literally skin deep, that even thinking about it hurt. They’d rather die than face that pain. Other species would outlive them, even if the Krogan lived longer, at least they tried to fix the problems for their future.  It the worst ways possible sometimes but they tried. And that’s what pissed Wrex off the most. They didn't even try.

 

          He wanted them to have a shorter life span so that the threat was closer. The fact they lived so long just prolonged their extinction for millennia instead of hundreds of years. Drell had short life spans because of their illness and so the Hanar were actively working to help them live on the humid home world. None of that was extended to the Krogan, though. Shepard had only seen two instances of people “helping” the Krogan, one was Saren and all he made was rabid clones. And the other was the Warlord Okeer and the only thing he’d managed out of those experiments were Grunt. Not that Grunt was a failure, but the scientist had given all the other failed Krogan fighters to a mad woman for cannon fodder. None of that saved their species. Genetically or culturally.

 

          Wrex would probably hate how she was behaving. Listless and bouncing from one threat to another, instead of proactively seeking out a solution. And then bashing the problem over the head with said solution. But heart and head wouldn’t let her move forward. Mainly because she understood why the Krogan were the way they were on some. It didn’t matter how strong you were, something more powerful and unseen could rock you to the core and bring you to your knees. It was a bitter pill to swallow. And whatever was within her now wasn’t a global plague or some foreign agent as far as she could tell. (Though who knows with Cerberus. Maybe they’d put in a failsafe to shut her down from the inside out in case she didn’t obey). Whatever it was, it was something she couldn’t grab and yank out and couldn’t think straight to deal with.  Nor did she think it was fixable.

 

_This was just the galaxy’s way of balancing itself out. They live. I suffer._

 

          She’d planned to go see about the ship’s repairs but mental exhaustion got the better of her. Her feet took her to her bedroom without realizing. She couldn’t tell Thane this. He would be too concerned for the way her body moved without her mind’s awareness. The room though, it was a large apartment style room that must have been for the Shadow Broker’s most trusted employees when the ship was under different management. She didn’t use much of it though. Just the bed.

 

          Shepard didn’t turn on the lights and let the room stay dark while she peeled off her casual clothes. Because of that, she didn’t bother to put on pajamas, she didn’t have the energy to look for them anyway and then climbed under the covers, and waited for the pain to start up.

 

          Once she laid down, and she tried to force sleep, she stopped paying attention to the time around her. And she couldn’t remember the things that happened before she went to sleep. How weird was it that she could remember all the horrors of the Collector’s base battle but laying in bed, those memories refused to code properly into her mind.

 

          She vaguely remembered Thane poking his head in to check on her. He’d asked if she wanted company. He always had to ask since her moods were known to flip flop wildly since the mission’s end.

 

          She did remember telling him “no” even though she didn’t mean it. She remembered his kind “Alright, Siha, I’ll be in my room if you need me.” Even though she wanted him to come in anyway to check on her. And then the door shut behind him, the hallway light that had crept in when he opened the door was gone and the room was blanketed in darkness again.

 

          Shepard shut her eyes tightly, fighting back tears she couldn’t explain and pressed her face into the pillow to keep the emotions burning in her chest from escaping and forcing out sobs. Sobs that would have just compounded on to each other until she was screaming. So, she pushed them down. Deep. Deep. And even deeper. And then a bit deeper until she felt it all through her body, and the pain in her limbs and hips and everything flared up.

 

          What time she went to bed, she wasn’t sure but it took too long. Even mentally exhausted, her mind didn’t want to sleep and actively fought the entire time. But it wasn’t until the pain in her body grew too great, so great that sleep wasn’t optional anymore. Her mind was like a computer and instead of waiting for the safe Shut-down procedure, her body just jammed the power button and knocked her out completely.

 

          For the first time in a long time though… she dreamed something that wasn’t Prothean Warnings or previous battles.

 

          It was either dreams or nightmares on the scale but there should have been something for the middle ground of good and bad dreams.

 

          It had been so long since she dreamed about the day of her parent’s death, or even thought about them, that she wasn’t sure how to feel anymore. That day had been another one of those endings. One that didn’t feel right. Yes, her parents were dead but there was a numbness that she had never allowed herself to process. So, no wonder she hardly dreamed about it. She couldn’t understand why she was having that dream, though. Maybe her mind just wanted to throw one more heavy weight on her back. Just enough so that she’d suffocate by morning and never wake up.


	2. River of Memories

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bad things are easier to deal with in dreams. In dreams, that nagging logical part of the brain doesn't kick in and so the road blocks you've put up in your head to keep your safe are ignored for the sake of a new dream time adventure. Katrina Shepard's dreams decide to dig deep into her past and relive some very painful, long buried memories. But some time bad things need to be exposed and laid out in the open air. Bad memories are like any other wound. Some need to be covered to heal, while others need to breathe. She'd been treated open air injuries like bandageable ones and then wondered why they started to fester.
> 
> Shepard makes the big step to make a step for her mental health. It's not easy, but the first step is always talking about the problem.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bit of a trigger warning: This fic does deal heavily with child abuse, racial child abuse to be specific, drugs and the after effect of a ten year old growing up on the streets.   
> If you can’t deal with talk about child abuse, I’ll put a short mini summery at the bottom of the text so that you won’t miss out on any important plot points for the series. Thanks.

          First things first, it was important to know that Katrina Shepard is Katyayani Shahali. Seemed silly to bring this up since everyone that needed to know this information knew of the great Spectre’s two names. Katrina was the name given to her by an adopted family and one she kept and reappropriated later in life to use as a cadet in the Alliance military. Katyayani was her birth name, given to her by loving parents but mainly by a not-so-devout Hindi father after the Goddess Katyayani. Which of the two was her real name was up for debate but that was not the debate that could be settled in her sleeping hours. That was not the debate her mind wanted to have that night either.

 

          Second, and connected to the above fact, Katrina consciously or subconsciously, or both, decided that her and Katyayani were two different people. There was no reason for this distinction other than it was just simpler to deal with all the traumas that way. She didn’t have time to mourn over things like the loss of her family, or the loss of her childhood, or the loss of everything that made her, her, during boot camp. During that time, there were just too many early mornings, and late nights, and drill sergeants that shouted into her ears to worry about Katyayani’s problems. Little fragile Katyayani couldn’t exist in boot camp because it would have broken her, she had too many fractures. Katrina was clean and new and could handle the pressure. It was just easier to keep moving forward with her life if she rationalized that her childhood had happened to someone else. All she had to do after that was extend one of her famous awkward shoulder pats of empathy to the traumatized youth and hope that she’d (her past self) would figured it out in the end.  

 

          “Hope it works out for you, Kid.” She’d said to her past self before putting up a metaphorical brick wall of repression. She laid each brick carefully and poured and mixed and smoothed cement until she could no longer see Katayayani’s hardened and tear stained face. If anyone asked Katrina about her childhood she’d give a vague answer of “It was rough but I survived”. Anything more specific and she’d have to peak over the wall that separated herself from her past.

 

          One of her biggest fears wasn’t that the little girl she was hadn’t moved from that spot since she walled her off but had been replaced by a mirror. Then be she’d be forced to confront the realization that they were one in the same. All Katrina’s pain was Katyayani’s pain and visa versa. Of course, there were a few times when she’d connect her past to her present but in her head, they were only pure coincidence. They were all just in an -“Oh, this Katyayani girl had the same thing happen to her too, how weird” way. There was never a real acknowledgement that they were the same person. Not if she could help it.

 

          As far as she cared to admit, she lived with her parents, they died, some terrible things happened she wouldn’t admit, and then she joined the military. Clean the hands. Put up the apron. Story over.

 

          “What about the Reds?”  

 

          “What about who now? No idea. Sorry. You’re thinking about someone else.”

 

          She even let people who she cared for call her by her birth name. It gave her a warm fuzzy feeling when she heard it but even then, it was only on a barely surface level respect of her past. This was just, as far as she believed it to be, a matter-of-fact secret that they should know. And only because there was the off chance that they might look too deeply into her history and find a name that the majority of the galaxy didn’t know.  

 

         Still, it was a name she’d once been called out of love, so it was still nice to hear it. It didn’t matter how much repression she did, she’d never forget the feelings, even if she compartmentalized the source. That was how higher order conditioning work.

 

          It was easy after that to believe “That girl” and Shepard were separate people. Sure, they shared the same name but it was all just chance. There had to be loads of not-so hindu girls, she rationalized, that had the same name. It was a good name after all.

 

           It was foolish. And unhealthy. And probably a source of some of her turmoil. She’d survived hell in her childhood but in her adulthood she acted like she couldn’t do it again. And this was all because she kept erasing, and scrubbing, and sanitizing, and quarantining her past, parts of which would have given her knowledge on how to survive once more if she’d stop being so stubbornly fractured and just own the past! Her past!

 

          That was enough, her brain decided, and pulled the proverbial bandage from the disjointed memories in her dream. Though, this does become a bridge to the next fact that was important to understand the dream Katrina was having.

 

          Third and final fact, it was only by pure chance and the randomness and mystery of dreams that her subconsciousness decided that this night of all nights Shepard would remember the above facts. The actions of her subconscious brain seemed planned and were anthropomorphized, as if there was some kind of grand scheme to teach her a lesson (at least that’s how she’d see it in the morning) but that just wasn’t the case. There are some people that theorize that dreams work in such a direct and purposeful way. They believe that it acts as a problem solving mechanism for the waking mind’s problems. And because they work on the subconscious level they are able to connect with long broken bridges of thought, or memories thrown so deep in the mind and hidden behind walls so old that the paths to them are too overgrown and dangerous for the conscious mind to traverse. Maybe these people are right. But not that night. Maybe because her troubles were sat on her sleeve and were easiest to connect together, her brain decided that reliving her childhood was the dream she should have. But it could have been any dream to be honest.  The Reapers again, Prothean beacons, strange vague threesomes on top of a speeding Normandy while Hanar clap and sing around her naked writhing body. This dream meant a lot, but it wasn’t planned. She was just lucky it came when it did.

 

 ===

          So for the seventy or so minutes since she went to sleep, her brain compiled memories and emotions and connected Katrina to Katyayani in a way she hadn’t allowed in ages and created a dream for her to live through. Or a nightmare. Or just memories. Real life was scarier than fiction some times.

 

===

          It all started with a knock on the front door. Her front door.  Katyayani was five or six at the time. She looked at her short legs and knew she couldn’t be much older than that. They dangled off the edge of the couch and were no where near close to touching the floor.  In a few years she’d hit a growth spurt too so that confirmed the age in her dream mind. Sure, Shepard never grew over 5’ 5” but this difference was miles to how tiny of a girl she was back them.

 

          For a brief moment of semi-lucid dreaming, Katrina wondered how could parents just up and die on a little girl. She knew better as an adult but her mind, in that moment was still young and by a child’s logic her parents were selfish. But then her mind put her back on the predetermined tracks of her memory/dream. That’s how her dream was that night, not unlike other dreams but the significance of the brief flashes of control and insight felt more important. But then it was back to autopilot. Back to observing the end of her childhood as it happened all those years ago.

 

          Katrina/Katyayni sat still on the couch, in front of a blaring big screen tv with cartoons on, her parents weren’t dead yet. The knowledge of their death was on the other end of that knock. She ignored the knocks at first because her parents were away. They’d left to go to the grocery store to get something for dinner, and she wasn’t allowed to open the door when they weren’t home. But the knocks kept coming and the handle jingled and someone spoke on the other end softly. The only reason she didn’t hear the words was because she’d turned the tv up too loud. Her parents were away so she could blast the tv all she wanted.  

 

          So she climbed down from the couch to at least peak at the knocker from the peephole. Her short legs dangled from the couch too tall for her body, and with one big leap she jumped down to the floor. Normally she would have used the cushioned foot stool to get down since sometimes it hurt her ankles to jump that far. (Far for a child, adult Shepard jumped further and higher and gave no fucks about ankle pain when death was always at her heels.) But the more she paid attention, the more she noticed the urgency of the guest’s knocking and it made her nervous. This made her actions were reckless and urgent too.

 

          Katyayani pushed a chair to the peephole, one that sat by the door so guests could remove their shoes comfortably before entering the house. She saw a police woman. Black, short poufy hair, round face, sad eyes. Katyayani was confused about the sadness in the woman’s grey eyes. Police officers had never looked sad when she saw them. There were two that worked at her school but they never looked sad. Just a little sleepy. And then there was a kid in her class who’s dad was a police officer. He always came with a big smile on his face and even let the kids play with his flashlight while he was there. There was another moment of brief lucidity, or just a long lost connection with other memories as the police officer at her door as a child connected with all the other memories of police from her lifetime. Dreams were just annoyingly fluid like that. Young Katyayani wasn’t anxious about the police officer, just curious, but older Katyayani, teenager by then, as well as Katrina were both anxious, but for different reasons. Her teen self knew pigs meant trouble and her adult self knew officers that knocked that hard and looked that sad on the other side of doors meant bad news. Both of them wanted to bolt but neither were in control of the dream. Just little Katyayani and she didn’t know any better. So she pushed the chair aside and opened the door because at that time, police officers were safe to open doors for.

 

          “Is your name, Katyayani?” The officer asked when the door opened. The woman was tall. Taller than the adult Shepard was for sure, but she compensated for the high difference by kneeling and getting eye level with Katyayani. She instantly liked the police officer. She always hated when folks talked down to her. And there the first stitch of mending the division between Katyayani and Katrina formed. Katrina hated that too. When she was a little girl, all she could do was cry and pout and stomp her feet from frustration when adults refused to take her seriously and looked down on her like she didn’t know what she was talking about. As an adult though, Katrina threw her short weight around like a wrecking ball and demanded respect. She’d made a name for herself in life by putting people on their metaphorical and literal knee when they pushed her too it.   

 

          “Yes,” Katyayani answered honestly. She wasn’t concerned why a police officer would even know her name because at that age, adults knew everything. Especially police. They must have known everything about everyone or else how could they keep people safe. Child logic of course.

 

          “Hi Katyayani, my name is Dani, Can I call you Kat?” She asked and Katyayani shook her head hard.

 

          “No, that’s not my name. My mom said to make sure people say my name right. If they don’t they are not nice people.” Katyayani said with a self-righteous huff. Her mother and father drilled that into her head more so than they drilled the actual spelling of her name. Then another stitch, another connection: Make sure people respect you, who you are, what you are. Even if she didn’t use her birth name, she still held on to that lesson. Whatever you call me, Kat, Katrina, Shepard Bitch, you better put a fucking Ma’am in there. Got it?

 

          “Of course. Katyayani, that’s a very pretty name. My full name is Daminika but people always say it wrong too.” The officer smiled and tried to connect with her. Maybe she even respected her for being so adamant about people speaking her name with all the full lovely syllables her parents bestowed on her. The smile reminded her of her mother’s smile. That memory was made sour though when it fused into another memory later in her timeline.

         

          In it, there was an older, rounder and grayer Daminika, still a patrol cop and answering a call about suspicious activities in a local city park. That’s where a teenage Katyayani almost drew a gun on the officer to remove all witnesses to her illicit activities. A big drug deal or something. Daminika hadn’t recognized the older, wilder orphan but Katyayani recognized the officer. This was the only reason, not self-preservation, not reverence for another’s life, just a old flash of a kind woman in her memories who smiled at her as a kid that made her put her pistol way and flee instead of engage in a fire fight. Biotic shields and springy limps and a mix of narcotics saved her life that night. Luck again. If it was another cop, she wouldn’t have hesitated and been another “Death by Police” and a Jane Doe in a pine box. She’d never remember this woman by Dani, just Daminika, because she was sure she would never have used that name if her force respected her. She shouldn’t have still be a patrol cop so many years down the road if they respected Daminika and not just tolerated Dani.

 

          But back to little Katyayani because that’s the only way her brain could make sense of the problem. Katrina had to see it all from the beginning, even if there were a few detours in her memory. Though, those detours did provide context and insight that her younger self didn’t have as well as fuse the two fractured identities in one cohesive manner. So they were important, linearly distracting, but important.

 

          “May we come in?’ The dream Daminika asked and for the first time Katyayani noticed people standing with the officer. She’d been so tall she eclipsed everyone behind her when she’d looked through the peephole.  There was another officer, male, short cropped brown hair, staring off in the distance with his hat pressed against his chest. Damn near flattened really. Like he was trying to put it and the fist through his chest bones. He looked sadder than Daminika.  He also looked like the kid in her class’ father but that could have been a trick of memory, transposing one familiar face over an unfamiliar one. He wasn’t as important as Daminika and certainly not as important as the lady standing to his left.

 

          Every version of Katyayani hated this woman. Even the child Katyayani at the door. But that was only because the woman looked down at Katyayani as if she was bored with the whole thing and didn’t want to be there. Also she didn’t smile at her like Daminika did. She couldn’t even be sad like the Male Officer to her right. Then Katyayani could at least feel sorry for her. That was just childish hate. The rest of the hate came from the older memories that flooded her mind and threatened to wake her up from her fitful sleep.

         

          The woman’s name was Mrs. Trent. She remembered Mrs. Trent only making short visits where she would never speak to her, just her adopted parents. And then she would always believe their lies without checking with Katyayani at all! What she remembered more though was not seeing Mrs. Trent for months on end when things got worse in her adopted life and she needed a way out!

 

          “I’ll come over tomorrow, Kat, I promise.” Mrs. Trent repeated her age old lie. How many children had she lied to? How many kids died from worst treatment because tomorrow was too late for them.  

 

          “That’s not my name.” She replied but never saw Mrs. Trent the next day. Or the day after that! OR THE DAY AFTER THAT! And even when she stopped living with her adopted parents and lived on the streets there were still kids who’d had their own version of the mysterious “Mrs. Trent!”

 

          She hated her for so much and for so long! Even when she got older, and learned the truth of about how bad child protective services were, and learned that many social workers were just overloaded and really cared about children, she knew that Mrs. Trent wasn’t one of them! Connections with a gang gave her access to a lot of people who knew a lot of ways to get information and the woman was just in it for the check. And because she couldn’t get into the career she had really wanted she took it out on the kids in her charge. She never started out as a good person and just became disillusioned with all the work like many did, she just didn’t give a fuck. She was evil and would always be evil and even if Katyayani or Katrina or whoever hated the system as well, she’d never ever stop hating Mrs. Fucking TRENT!!

 

          Daminika’s voice came back to the forefront of her dream and asked her question again. That was the only thing that kept Shepard asleep through the burning rage that made her heart knock violently in her chest. Her voice calmed the fire and relaxed her adrenaline enough to continue dreaming.

 

          “Okay.” Katyayani answered and left the people in.

 

          And then as dreams do, her memories leaped to the moment just after the group was let in her house and had settled on the couch with her.

         

          She was buried in Officer Daminika’s shoulders, crying her heart out because they’d told her that her parents were dead. But it was a concept she couldn’t wrap her young mind around so their death wasn’t the only reason she was crying. She was so frustrated! She thought all her questions were logical but none of the answers they gave were right. Or they weren’t the ones she wanted. For a kid there was very little difference. 

 

          All the adults answers were things like:

         

          “They aren’t coming to pick you up from the station.”

 

          “No, you can’t come home with me.”

 

          “No, you can’t stay here and wait for them to come.”

         

          “Honey they aren’t coming, I’m sorry.”

 

          Kids weren’t good at regulating their emotions and so all her frustration at their wrong answers came out in tears and snot and choking. She’d never had a pet die on her, or an older relative, all her extended family was old and lived over seas and she’d never seen them. Things didn’t die around her. So she couldn’t grasp the meaning of death.

 

          “They died, honey.” Daminika said, patting her head.

 

          “What’s dying?” Katyayani asked.

 

          “It’s like…. Sleeping for a long time.” The male officer said. He was sniffling. Maybe he was the father of the kid in her class, Katrina thought. If he had a child her age, all her blubbering must have hurt him more than the rest of them.

 

          “Is it because I got a bad grade yesterday?” Katyayani rationalized because it was the only thing that made sense to her. “If I do better, will they come back?” She asked. This sent the barely held together male officer into tears and he had to excuse himself outside.

 

          “I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to make you cry!” Katyayani called out to the man through her own tears. She was a bad kid, she’d decided. That’s why her parents were gone. And that’s why the officer was crying.

         

          After that, her dreams leaped forward in time from one moment to the next. This wasn’t any fault of her mind attempting to condense her memories into a more manageable size so that they would fit into the ninety or so minutes each REM phase was allowed in an average sleep cycle. This was just how her brain had encoded the time between the shelter and the foster homes and then her adopted home all those years ago. Even if she had enough courage to revisit her childhood in her adult life, the memories would have come back to her in the same way, no matter how hard she tried.

 

          They were just a fractured mess of events, haphazardly stored away by a child unable to process the world moving around her. When her foster mother gave her a cake for her seventh birthday, she was shocked that the world had kept moving forward when she had stayed so fixed in the past.  And there, another connection was made to Katrina’s past that she’d refused to acknowledge.

         

          When the Normandy was shot down, and Katrina Shepard died in space and was brought back two years later, the first thing she asked about was getting her old crew back together for the next mission dropped at her lap. It shook her to the core when she realized that the galaxy had kept moving on around her, and her friends had moved on with their lives after her death.  Still she asked The Illusive Man about their whereabouts but each “No” from his mouth just set her skin on fire from embarrassment. Of course they kept on living. Of course they didn’t wait around for her to return. Some of them wouldn’t even come back if she begged.  If she’d learned from her past instead of partitioning it off, she would have known people moved on (even when you don’t or cant) and wouldn’t have embarrassed herself on Horizon trying to get Kaidan to believe her.   

         

          Sure, as a child she wasn’t dead so she didn’t have her older self’s reasons for being checked out from reality but she might as well have been. She needed someone, anyone to hold her hand and walk her through each and every thing for the next year and a half because she’d just stopped functioning. More like a doll than a child. One hand passed her around to another hand. Social workers, two different foster parents, a lawyer, oh and a clerk of court when she had to pee once but refused to walk without someone to guide her to the bathrooms she’d been many times before. She was so clingy as a child.

 

           And another mending, Katrina realized, watching her young self list through that portion of their shared life. She was just as clingy as an adult. Except instead of hand holding, she threw her body and mind into every single thing her friends wanted and needed in order to keep them happy and safe and together. And when her boyfriend and best friend got into a fight over who should be the closest to her, she went from blind rage to inconsolable tears, because she wanted them both near her and the idea of either of them pulling away scared her.  Sure, military regulations and a professional persona allowed her to keep from indulging in the clingy, childish, nonsense hand-holding she’d dissolved into in her youth but-  But if she could have gone through the entire Collector issue with someone holding her by the hand for comfort the entire time, without anyone judging her, she would have.

 

          And then the dream/memory moved from Katrina’s point of view, back to Katyayani’s because it was important.

 

          “Sam was like family to us.” A woman in a crisp blue pant suit boo-hooed into a napkin. She sat on the witness stand, her attention turned a judge and the white haired man seemed to look at her with sympathetic eyes.  Katyayani knew this woman. She’d been to her and her husband’s house a few times. The woman worked with her parents and they had a daughter around her age and they invited her parents over many times. But Katyayani didn’t like this woman. Or her husband. From the outside in, “Sam was like family to us” sounded true.

 

          Nicknames denoted familiarity and friendliness so that must have been true. But that was only if they didn’t know how her parents felt about giving proper respect to peoples names. Katyayani wished that Officer Daminika had been at the hearing because she needed a voice then. She couldn’t find a way to make her lips form the words:

 

          “She’s lying!”

         

          Sam was what people called her mother when they couldn’t or wouldn’t twist their tongues to say her mother’s full first name, Sampaguita. Anyone that called her Sam couldn’t have been a true friend. They went to the couple’s house out of social obligation because they asked so often. And took so many pictures and kept them so close that it was bizarre. If it wasn’t for the fact that her parents died in a car accident, caused by a trucker falling asleep on the road, adult Katrina would have thought this was all part of some long con. But it was probably just to prove to people that they were “good” and “color-blind”. A “See, we have friends of all races!” sort of thing.  

 

          But she was too tired to say anything. Not just tired in the way she moved through her recent years as a ghost but the night before, she didn’t get any sleep. It wasn’t something as silly as a nerves over the custody trial. She barely recognized that trial was a thing. It was a more practical, grounded reasons. The foster home she was at had a new kid come in the day before and the whole night he cried. She remembered her first night in a shelter, and then her first foster home, she did the same thing. By the second she was all cried out. She sat with the kid while he cried, hoping he’d stop so she could sleep but by the time he stopped, the sun was up and it was time for court.         

 

          And then there was the way her brain had decided to prioritize information for that past year and a half and so everything was so blurry. Unless it happened recently or had a massive impact on her life, like the cake, or the kid crying, she had a hard time pin pointing clear sequences of events and so her mind was just a jumbled, overwhelmed mess that made it hard to speak. The woman told other lies in the court that flew right past her head but Katyayani knew her mother’s name. And she knew that the shortened version of her mother’s name was wrong. But everything seemed to work against her to keep her from shouting out “That’s not my mom’s name!” in court. That could have halted the preceding’s. For at least a few days. At least for enough time for someone to step up who had her best interests in mind. That was Mrs. Fucking Trent’s job but that woman sat and boredly shuffled papers and agreed with everything that woman said.

 

          “Do you want to play with my daughter?” The mother asked her, in front of the whole court. Katyayani didn’t like to lie, she didn’t like when people lied either. Another mending. Katyayani liked to play with her daughter, it was the only thing she enjoyed about the awkward visits to their home. She just didn’t realized that the Mother was playing her in front of the court. But she was still just a kid.

 

          “Can I stay with [---]?” She didn’t remember her foster mother’s name so her mind just skipped over the name and filled it in with blank space that still held meaning the way dreams did.

 

          “No, Mrs. [---] is just a foster mother, you won’t be able to stay.” Said the judge. It was like the no’s when she asked about her parents. Katyayani just nodded, resigned that she’d have to live with her parent’s coworker and her husband and their child. For children, the choice was binary, so that was the only other option. Older Katyayani knew that wasn’t true, Katrina knew that this choice was irrelevant as she would have lived with the family regardless of her wishes. The husband was a very skilled lawyer and well liked by the judge.

 

          The dream ended for a almost an hour in real time because REM sleep had ended and a new cycle was starting. But if someone was observing her on monitors to mark her return the REM sleep, the time between didn’t matter in a dream.  In the dream world, time loss between the first dream and the next dream was snipped away like bad parts in a film and continued as if it was one single sequence of events.

 

          Her dream picked up in a pink bedroom. It had white walls and crisp white sheets and pink décor and pink pillows and dolls that did not look like her sitting on a pink and white dresser. They stared at her from her bed and she stared back. She’d been sitting their for a while. Angry. Nearly a year’s worth of anger built up from between the court hearing and this point in her life.

 

          “Katrina” The Mother called. That wasn’t the first time the name was used but it sure was the straw that broke the camel’s back and set a lot of bad events in motion. Katyayani sat in the bed and stared ahead at the white dolls on her dresser and ignored the calls for “Katrina.”

 

          “That’s not my name.” Katyayani mumbled to herself but also to the other person in the room. The daughter of the family. They shared the bedroom and she was on the other side of the room, packing up her bag for school while Katyayani stayed in bed. A year of living at that home and she didn’t like playing with her anymore. She didn’t like anything in that house.

 

          “Katrina” the mother called again.

 

          Katyayani would have answered but she’d decided to put in just as much effort into paying attention to the Mother as the Mother put into saying her birth name. None.

 

          The Mother had said it was “Too hard.”

 

          “Not if you tried” she’d retorted once. She was eight by then and was growing a bit of an attitude but who could blame her. They’d tried to strip everything of her parent’s identities from her, all she could hold on to was their desires to be respected. She earned a slap for that comment.

 

          Disrespectful, the mother said.

 

          The disrespect was in the refusal to pronounce her name properly, Katyayani thought but didn’t voice. That’s why she would also remember this family by their titles. Only The Mother, The Father, the Daughter. A way to strip them of their identities like they had for her.  And also to make them monsters in a mythological tale if she spun in properly. The name eaters.

 

          “That’s not my name.” Katyayani said, a bit louder and their was a gasp to the side from The Daughter. There was so much blue, she remembered. The room looked better bathed in blue. It washed out all that oppressive white.

 

          “What did you say?” The Mother was closer now and she too gasped at the blue everywhere.

 

          “That’s not my name!” Katyayani scream. And screamed! AND SCREAMED! And the more she screamed the more blue filled the room and the more the gravity in the room flipped. Those dolls were on the ceiling now, damn near dancing as they were whipped by forces she didn’t understand.  Shoes knocked out light bulbs and instead of the shards falling to the ground, they spun around and twinkled in the blue maelstrom like snowflakes.  

 

          The Daughter was screaming, not in anger but in terror. The Mother was screaming too, for her daughter because of the scene she witnessed from the doorframe but made no attempt to save her child from the storm of blue energy. Pathetic cowardly woman.

 

          Their screams joined Katyayani’s screams like some macabre chorus but Katyayani didn’t want to hear their voices, so she screamed even louder to drown them out. And her blue energy seemed to trap their sounds in the violent vacuum she created and amplified her voice even more. A window broke. And still it was so loud in there. Everything was trapped in her energy. It made sense. The laws of gravity turned inside out in that room, the rules that governed the osmosis of sound might have went out the window as well. If, you know, she let them out the broken window.

         

          Katyayani was too angry to take center stage in her dream, if she had Katrina would have woken up before the dream was over. So Katrina’s adult mind could watch and observe the destruction from an outsider’s perspective. That perspective wasn’t accurate, she couldn’t go back and time and truly watch what had happened. This is just what she believed when down from years of seeing other biotics unleashing too much energy and her brain creating a view point for her to watch from. 

 

          Katrina knew that all the anger wasn’t just at the name thing. It was a whole host of slights that came from living with The Family. So many jokes at her expense that she was told to just walk off. There were jokes about her food requests. They said they didn’t want the house stinking from the things her parents had cooked lovingly for her when they were alive. The only time they let her eat things that even remotely sounded like home was when they all went to get cheap imitations at water down restaurants and she was told be grateful.

 

          (An Indian waitress, not the same place her father was from but close enough to feel like home, brought her something off menu once because they both knew the food she ordered wasn’t want she really wanted. Katyayani made the mistake of thanking her in front of the Family. They never went back.)

 

          They missed pronounced her and her family’s surname over and over again. There were even jokes against a race that she wasn’t even apart of that they ran with. Shahali became Sheneneh. And then they’d laugh like they were so fucking clever and when she cried they told her to suck it up.

 

          They refused to understand how hurtful it was. Or how hurtful they were.

 

          They left her out of any fun family events, like going on vacations, and made her stay with baby sitters. She was spanked for things so little and inconsequential that sometimes she was just afraid to breathe wrong around them. They sent her to bed hungry for not putting her shoes in the right spot, or sassing them when all she did was ask follow up questions to their constantly changing rules. They were so cruel but everything was below the surface or carefully hidden under clothes and she was even punished for being afraid of them. 

 

          When they would have guests over and they expected her to parade around for company like an exotic doll (Their relatives called her exotic) she refused. And then more punishment came from her refusals. Didn’t they understand that she was still in mourning and scared of them, and most importantly just angry all the time! She didn’t have the energy to play act for them. One moment pretending they were one big happy family and be grateful for them taking her in when it could have been so bad elsewhere. They used the threat to send her someplace worse if she didn’t behave a lot. Not around guests, just to her, quietly when no one was watching. Her fear of worst treatment than what she was living through worked for a time. And all the while she still had to be a passive prisoner to their cruelty, and their never ending efforts to erase her identity in order to make her into something she wasn’t.

 

          Some of the efforts must have worked, Katrina’s lucid thoughts filled the dream she was watching. Katyayani’s held fast for as long as she could but an eraser can remove ink from paper if it’s rubbed hard enough. Sure it damages that section of paper beyond use but the words are gone right? That’s all that matters when the goal is to snuff out information.

 

          But for that point in the dream, calling her Katrina yet again was just one too many pieces of cruelty. She couldn’t speak up in court before but there was so much anger in her that it boiled in her gut like steam and shot everything she’d been swallowing for years out in one violent burst.

         

          Then it faded. A fade that was perceived in her dream because she was meant to remember this. This was when they started taking her to the doctors. Flashes of words and memories whizzed past in a matter of seconds and her adult brain filled in what her child mind was drugged into forgetting.

 

          This was when the word “biotic” started flashing and the first time she’d heard it as a child. But it was only in hushed whispers. The Couple only spoke about it when no one was around or only when they were with a few trusted doctors. Doctors that were friends with the Lawyer Father.

         

          Mrs. Fucking Trent should have come to check on her then. Because they had said something else was wrong with her once. Something that required her to be medicated within an inch of her life and barely cognizant of the outside world. If Mrs. Fucking Trent had showed up she could have been shipped to some biotic school like Kaidan or one of the shit whole Cerberus facilities like Jack.  Not all the kids were abused there and she could have rolled her chances with more children for the overseers to focus on. A silver lining if you squinted hard enough.

         

          Two years of this drugging when on though. Katrina knew later why the Couple had kept her by keeping her in a chemical catatonia. But that revelation came later in her dream and her life and she didn’t want to spoil herself. The good part was coming up.

        

          When the dream slowed down again it was when she was much older, and propped in front of a tv while people talked and laughed around her. Her feet touched the ground this time, unlike when she was a kid.  And unlike the past two years of her life, she was lucid. And angry. They forgot to give her medicine. They got sloppy and left her the tiniest opening to fight back.  

 

          Back in the driver’s seat, Katyayani stared forward and listened to the hustle and bustle around her, faking the drugged state she’d been in for too long. She’d learned how to be a good actor, just not the way they wanted. And lucky for her, her audience did all they could to ignore her like a stage hand. They didn’t know she wasn’t the one that handed Brutus his knife from around the curtained corner but now held the knife in center stage to circle Ceaser.  

 

          From her spot she gathered that this was her birthday. Well it was suppose to be her joint birthday party, from what the guests said. She must have been officially ten but the party wasn’t for her she knew.  Their daughter just so happened to have a birthday two days after Katyayani’s. If that day was the Daughter’s birthday or hers, it didn’t matter because the party was all for the Daughter. Lots of pink and glitter and Zebra print and ugly curly girly lettered banners sat around her in the living room like a piece of disability porn.

         

          Honestly, she had no problem with the color scheme and the girly aspects, she’d been a bit of a girly girl when she lived with her parents, but years of pink pink pink pink PINK PINK PINK ruined it for her. Hear the word “Pink” enough and it loses it’s meaning like any word would. Hear the work “Pink” too much and even the sound of it years down the road creates a visceral anger like the universally understood disgust to the sound of an alarm clock.

         

          “I forgot, Katrina’s medicine.” The Mother said to herself, and scurried into the living room with a glass of water and a pill. They used to dissolve the pill because she spit it out but they were sloppy and distracted by a party.  “Here you go sweet heart.” She said lovingly because their were guest around but jammed the pill in Katyayani’s mouth, squeezing her cheeks so hard tears almost fell from her eyes. But she had to play the drugged role so she did her best not to react. That included biting her finger off though instincts and fury screamed at her to.

         

          Katyayani took the medicine as she always did but there was a fire in her eyes that The Mother didn’t recognize. Probably because she was so used to seeing the girl as a prop to push around the house. She was a ghost for so long, the fact she became a Spectre in her adult life was poetic to say the least.

         

          “I have to use the bathroom, please.” Katyayani managed to imitate her drugged slur as best she could and because they payed little attention to her, they did not see that she was faking it.

         

          “Of course sweet heart.” The mother said and not so gently grabbed her wrist and dragged her upstairs. Katyayani did her best to keep up while still imitating the clumsy movements they were used to. She bumped her knee a few times on the way up, especially when they were out of eye sight of the guests.

         

          “Go in your bed when you’re done. I don’t want to see you down stairs.” The Mother said, shoving Katayayani in and shutting the door. “My guests don’t need to see you dribbling like a fool all day.” She said to herself as if she wasn’t the cause of Katyayani’s involuntary drugged behavior.

 

          Kaytyayani wanted to do something, she could have, since she was far more lucid, like just bring the walls down around her with her biotics but she had a more important thing to do and completion was time sensitive. As soon as she heard The Mother’s footsteps recede down the stairs she shoved her fingers in her mouth and threw up the pill. She inspected it in the toilet to see how much had dissolved. Not much, not enough to put her completely out by the next time they brought her medicine.

       

          Her plan formed on the seat of her pants she knew she was going to leave that night. As soon as the party died down, she’d hide out in someone’s car, maybe a guest from far away and bolt the first chance she got. She just went to her bedroom though to finish planning, and finish listening. And also incase the dissolved bits were enough to knock her out for a few minutes. She didn’t want to be caught asleep in a hallway with a bag on her back.

         

          So, Katyayani laid in bed, blankets up to her nose and listened to the sounds of guests laughing and the Couple entertaining.

         

          “Oh where is Katrina?” Someone had asked.

         

          “She’s not feeling up to guests. Not one of her good days.” The Mother said and the guests “aww”ed and apolgized for how rough that must be.

         

          Fuck them.

          

          Katyayani, grumbled to herself and almost got out of bed to start packing her bag to leave until she heard a sound. Foot steps. She shut her eyes and turned to the wall so they wouldn’t see her face.

         

          “How much longer do we have to do this? It’s not going to work forever.” The Father said. He was the muscle, throwing around legal law here and greasing palms there but always the pessimist.

         

          “Not much longer. When she’s a bit older, we’ll say that the medicine isn’t working and she’s getting violent again. Everyone saw what she did to her bedroom.” The Mother said and Katyayani had never gotten the chance to survey the damages.

         

          “How will that affect her inheritance? And the life insurance? And the house?” The Father said and Katyayani had to fight all her urges to leap out of bed. _My what?_

         

          “That’s your job honey. I’m sure we can dip into it some to get her care. We’ll just send her to some hole in the wall place and say we sent her elsewhere. And then take the difference until she’s eighteen of course.” The Mother said, there was so much venom in her voice. As if it was Katyayani’s fault for being a child and time progressed at a steady pace on earth. “We put in enough money for this, so you better make sure it works. We can’t keep borrowing from the house.” She grumbled and they both walked off.

         

          Lucky they walked, for Katyayani, not them, because she gripped her sheets in an attempt to stifle off her anger to keep from her biotics flaring up once again. She clenched her eyes tightly shut and things when black in her dream for a moment. Another snip of the dark parts of the dream and the next time she opened her eyes, she was sitting under a bridge overpass, with a school backpack and an oversized jacket on.

         

          She had no idea how she got there. Just another moment of her brain just abdicating it’s duty to save memories. She wasn’t in a rush and she didn’t taste the charge her biotics made in her mouth when she used them too often. So she must not have killed the Family. From the looks of it, she just packed up, and walked out. And kept walking until night fell. There was even money in her pockets. They’d made her into a girl she wasn’t, but she was hungry, so she didn’t think too hard about where that money came from because they never let her have money.

 

          The suburbs she’d lived in were now a city. She must have walked so far. But that meant their were lots of places where she could grab some food. So she picked a little corner store that said it had hot sandwiches on the side and dug into her pockets.

 

          “I want a sandwich, please.” She’d said to the middle aged store clerk that was sweeping.

 

          “Sorry kid, kitchen closes after eight.” He said in an accent that sounded like her mother’s and she cried. She was tired of people telling her no. And so tired of people not giving her the basics she needed. Couldn’t they see she was hungry, and she missed her parents, and her legs hurt. She remembered how bad they hurt and all she could do was sit on the floor of the store and cry.

         

          “Woah woah! Calm down. Calm down. What’s the matter?” He asked and reached out for her. And stupidly, she would have let this stranger hold her because it had been so long since she’d been hugged. But then he spoke again.

 

          “Where are your parents? Lemme take you to them, huh?” He said with a kind voice. But the Officer Daminika had a nice voice and she took her to live in a Shelter. And her foster parents had nice voice but they made her live with The Family. And the Family pretended to be nice but all they wanted her for was money she didn’t even know she had!

         

          “Go away!” She screamed and scooted across the floor and she bathed the shop in blue just like she’d done to her own bedroom. It was her only defense and it raised reflexively like any wild animal’s defense would. She couldn’t, wouldn’t go back to them. On a side note,  The military had to put in a lot of extra training to keep her from reacting to every stray practice round and every surprise grapple with a show of biotic might.

         

          “What the hell kid!?” The man yelled and stepped back, watching as his store turned upside down around him. “Cut that out!” He yelled. Wrong choice. Because that only made it worst. Every light bulb and florescent display burst and went out to be replaced by her blue biotic energy that spiraled and twisted in it’s place.

 

          That was until it didn’t. Behind her came a slew of yelling that she hadn’t totally drowned out with the whooshing and crackling of her biotics. This was enough to make her drop her focus and the energy with it. And that’s when objects flew over her head and made contact with the shop owner’s head who raced to the back of the store to hide from the onslaught.  

        

          Before she could take in what happened, someone grabbed the collar of her jacket and yanked her from the store and down the street and around the corner, and away from the mess she’d made. Once they stopped running and let her go, Katyayani spun around to see that it wasn’t one person but a group of children. Children around her age she figured. Give or take a few years.

         

          “Close call with that old fucking bastard, eh?” Said a boy a little older than her. He was the ring leader, she assumed since he stepped up first to make contact with her. A hand shake. She went to shake his hand but immediately yanked it back. She wouldn’t be tricked again by nice gestures.

         

          “It wasn’t his fault.” Katyayani said under her breathe. Because it wasn’t. She’d panicked, not him.

         

          “He woulda took you to some cop or a social worker or something and you’d be back at your folks, right?” His name was Vinni she remembered. Or at least that’s what she called him. She’d gone to Vinni’s funeral just after he turned fifteen. Drive-by. She missed Vinni.

         

          “That’s.. that’s what he said.” Katyayani replied and straightened her clothing from the run and looked at all other kids. There was a darkness in their eyes of the memories of cops, and social workers and “folks”.

         

          “Ol’ goody toe shoes, I tell ya. Thinks he’s helping. He can help by giving us food when we ask. Better where we are.” A girl chimed in, her s’s elongated by missing front teeth and a lisp.

         

          “Exactly.” Vinni nodded and turned his attention back to Katyayani. “What’s your name, Blue?” The nickname caught her off guard and she opened her mouth to speak but shut it quickly.

         

          “I don’t have one.” She said. She didn’t trust him. Not with her name. Not with a fake one. Nothing.

         

          “Okay, I-Don’t-Have-One. We just gonna call you Blue, then. Don’t think it’s gonna work with the Reds but that thing you did in the shop though. That’s biotics ain’t it?” Vinni asked and got close into her personal space and she reactively pushed him away with the energy. Not hard, just enough to lift him off his feet momentarily and plant him back an inch.

         

          “Oh that’s biotics alright!” Vinni grinned and grabbed her hand. She couldn’t shake him. But he wasn’t trying to hurt her so she didn’t fight his grip. “You gotta place to be?” He asked and Katyayani shook her head.

         

          “Not anymore.” Katyayani answered gravely but Vinni tapped her on the head with his knuckle playfully.

         

          “Wrong answer. I’m sure the boss will take you in. Ain’t got many biotics so even if we gotta call you Blue, you gonna get a place in the Reds.” He smiled through broken teeth. Every version of Katyayani/Katrina missed Vinni. If he’d lived a few more years, she would have taken him to the Alliance with her. And then a massive discomfort and an urge to pee came. And even with her dreams flip flopping around lucidly, she knew this wasn’t how the memory went.

         

          Shepard opened her eyes to a dark bedroom and an uncomfortable sensation in her lower half. Biology was the alarm clock this time around. She had to pee so badly. She rolled out of bed groggily and shuffled to the bathroom while the flood gates of all her memories settled into the waking part of her brain.

         

          Her dream cut off when she became Blue of the Tenth Street Reds, their resident biotic. Everything after that came back in a flood that threatened to fill her stomach and make her wretch up what was left of the coffee she’d had before bed. Even if the dream wasn’t planned, it had done the trick. Shepard had.. a lot of issues. And so many stemming from the fact she’d never dealt with her past in a sensible way.

         

          Back on the first Normandy, she’d run into Finch from her old gang and she killed the man to keep her secret. Not from the world, but from herself.

         

          She pushed her hair out of her face, cleaned herself up and grabbed the blanket off her bed and wrapped herself up in it. She didn’t have the desire or energy to get dressed but she couldn’t just walk through the corridor naked. She just needed to get to Thane, or someone, whoever, because she just needed to be held. That stupid childish clinginess.

 

          On the way out, she peeped the time and saw it was nearly two in the morning. Shit. There were a quiet a few night owls in the Normandy, and even more people kept up by Collector nightmares but hopefully they were held up in their own bedrooms so no one would see her wrapped up in a blanket. Shepard managed to get to Thane’s room without being spotted and knocked at his door.  She would have laid her face on the metal while he waited if he didn’t open it so fast.

         

          “Siha?” Thane said groggily though his quick eyes flicked over her body quickly. This wasn’t one of her famous spontaneous “booty call” visits, something was wrong and he pulled her into the room and held her without knowing why she’d come so late. “Are you okay?” He finally asked and she shook her head.

         

          “No.” She answered him and pulled away, only to shuffle forward to his bed and lay down in it. He followed and climbed in after her and wrapped his long limbs around her body. She wished he wouldn’t ask questions but she’d been “off” for a while. He was due a few, especially after worrying him so much. He was a sick man, he didn’t deserve that. So she waited for them to come while she enjoyed the coolness of his dry skin.

         

          “Did you have a nightmare?” He asked and she shook her head.

         

          “I wish.” Shepard answered and Thane smoothed the hair on her head down in an attempt at affection and comfort. It was so welcome. Especially after her memories brought back all the emotions of her touched starved youth. He dug her fingers into her scalp like he knew she liked and she sighed loudly, pressing her face into his chest and tucking as much of her body as she could under his limbs. If she wanted to be totally selfish and needy, she would have woke Zaeed up as well to take up the rear and cuddle her from behind. Just so that she was totally enclosed.

         

          “You know I’m always here to talk if you need me Siha.” He said, kissing her forehead gently. She did her best to ignore the rattling sounds of illness in his lungs and just focus on his always steady heart beat. Assassin training she figured.

         

          “I-hmm.” She started and stopped, opening her mouth like a fish and unable to find words for the string of memories she encountered in her sleep. They were still playing in her background from where the dream left off. Where to even start? “You know my birthname is Katyayani right?” She said as if this was new information to him.

         

          “Of course. You have asked me to call you that when we sleep together enough to be intimately familiar with it.” Thane grinned and Shepard couldn’t help but snicker.

         

          “How could I forget.” She said sarcastically and then shook her head again, the smile fading from her face like an etch-a-sketch drawing and then laid her had back down on him. “I… I haven’t dealt with my past really well. I just… I.” She stopped and Thane’s hand moved down her hair and across her neck and back.

         

          “I believe a major part of this mission included many of us finding out we’d pushed aside parts of our past and deciding to deal with them before we passed.” He said empathetically, still trying to make her smile. It worked. Most of the crew’s personal business was some dark part of their past that they hadn’t dealt with properly, and they needed Shepard’s help to deal with it once and for all. Sadly she hadn’t had her own fieldtrip to deal with her past and come back with a clear head. Too much leading to do.

         

          “I wonder if your past might have something to do with this scar… here.” Thane said and then squeezed her sides, she yelped and laughed and flailed and settled on a kneeled position next to him, a few inches away while he laid on his side with a shit eating grin on his face. 

         

          “Stop trying to make me laugh.” She said through another snicker. Thane nodded, his face now serious as he ran his hand over her thigh.

          

          “Is that why you’ve been in poor spirits, Siha?” Thane asked.

         

          “Maybe. Sort of. I think that’s part of it. I- I almost killed my adopted parents…” She said out of the blue. Well, out of the blue for Thane, for Shepard it was right on track from where her dreams had left off and the memories that were still pouring in like background noise while they talked.

         

          “Oh. Well that is something in the past worth dealing with, I believe. Do you want to talk about it?” He asked but then got a good look at her, she could see the glint of his dark eyes flickering and his brows furrowed.  “Why don’t you have clothes on?” During the flailing her blanket must have slipped down off her body and exposed her nakedness.

         

          “I didn’t go to sleep with them on, Duh.” She laughed wearily and pulled the blankets back over her body. Not because she was being modest but the rooms were too cold. And she was already about to lay out a lot of uncomfortable memories, might as well keep some bits of her self private. (Even if they were bits that he’d seen before, in great detail. It’s all a perspective thing. You get all of naked Shepard and no tragic backstory, or you get Tragic Backstory Shepard and totally covered Shep. Not both.)

         

          “Siha.” The nickname came out in an exasperated manner but Thane still laughed. He loved her too much to question her logic sometimes.  He patted the spot beside him again and she obediently climbed back into his protective embrace to finish her dream.

         

          “I ran away from my adopted parents when I was ten. On my birthday actually.” She laughed. “They were… they didn’t really want me, but they had to keep me around. But I’d already wrecked half the house with my biotics so they kept me drugged out of my mind for years.  They needed me to turned eighteen to sign over some money to them my parents left. That’s the only reason I lived to be honest. If they could…they probably would have took my money and left me to rot somewhere or worse.” She started, summarizing the last of her dream for him as simply as she could.    

          

          “They kept you almost as if you were a vase or a painting in hopes of getting their ..” He stopped. He was hesitant to say investment because that’s how he described his relationship with the Hanar. This was… something crueler that he didn’t have a word for. “Getting a big pay off from.”  She nodded, she heard the rage building in his system over the idea but continued her story.

         

          “I joined a street gang afterwards in order to stay out of the system and to keep their fucking plan from going through. Couldn’t cash in if they lost me. I started dying my hair then… when the missing reports started coming out on the news. I guess.. I just haven’t grown out of it.” There was an absent touch of her grown out hair, maybe first thing she needed to do to heal was cut off as much of the blond that was still holding on. She wasn’t hiding from anyone anymore. She focused on her dry nail beds after and picked at the skin while she talked. “I did… so much drugs to forget about everything.” She confessed.

         

          “Oh?” Thane said, genuinely surprised to hear that confession.

         

          “Yeah. The Great Shepard used to be a teenage junkie drug runner and resident biotic for a local gang. Put that on the recruitment posters and see how many folks join.” She laughed bitterly. Both to herself and the Alliance.  They used just enough of her backstory to make her a beacon for change but not enough so they could keep out the “true degenerates”.

 

          Hey youth- Shepard grew up on the streets and turned her life around and so can you!

 

          An underdog story always sold, but Shepard’s dog was so deep under that it could have been part of a natural history museum. One of those missing link dogs that look like bears or giant cats. Back then Shepard was so strung out she barely remembered what day it was, not all that different from her childhood, and certainly wasn’t able to turn her life around by picking herself up by her own bootstraps. That’s where someone else came into the picture.

          

          “I met Anderson when I was seventeen. Well… he met me really. In the hospital.” Shepard said and held Thane closer, and wrapped her legs around one of his long thighs.

         

          “Overdose?” Thane asked. It was logical.

         

          “No. More criminal.” She laughed and thought about what put her in the hospital. “I leveled half a city block with my biotics. Well, that’s what they told me. I just cracked a building and knocked down some light poles… And turned a car inside out. Bit of a mess really.”

         

          “How did that happen?” Thane asked. He’d seen her fight. She was so restrained with her biotics people wouldn’t know she was one until they were launched half way across the battle field. Lots of training and lots of restraint in her cadet life that’s why.

         

          “Bit of drugs. Bit of running out into the street while being chased by a rival gang. We stole their supply and they were shooting at us. I put up a shield for the rest of my people so I took up the rear so I’d get the brunt of the fire. I didn’t see the car coming because, boom, it hit me. It was a reflex.” She said and Thane nodded, and smoothed her hair out of habit and because their was nothing he could say. He didn’t want to interrupt her story.

         

          “That’s how I met Anderson. He was just… there by my bedside when I woke up. He looked at me so sternly but was also… I don’t know. Concerned, worried? He was reading a news paper and just folded it up in his lap as soon as I started moving around.” She thought back on the younger, well in his thirties at least, Anderson that made her stupid teenage heart flutter. “I think it must have been the drugs but I thought he was so… handsome.” She said a bit embarrassed at that, enough that her neck heated up at the admission.

          

          “You had a crush on your future commanding officer, Siha?” Thane asked through a soft laugh, that only made her warm up more. She’d never told anyone that, she barely revisited it herself. Especially since now, Shepard and Anderson’s relationship was mostly professional though sometimes he acted more like a stern father when she needed the direction.

          

          “Yes. I was young and dumb and pumped full of really good meds.” She said, justifying her crush. “He asked how I was feeling, he even held my hand when he noticed my heart rate going up on the mo          nitor. He must have thought I was scared but I was just flustered.” Her face burned but she smiled. There were happy memories in her childhood, she’d just shucked them all away because the bad were too many. When she was in a better mindset she’d look through them all again to pick out the good ones.

         

          “Then he got serious and said that there were police officers outside the door waiting to arrest me but he’d talk to them if I agreed to join the Alliance. I knew even if I said no he would have still talked to them but he was making me an offer I shouldn’t refuse. I would have ended up in jail if I’d stayed on earth. Or dead. One out of two ain’t bad.” Shepard laughed though she knew the earth death would have been the forever type. No one would have tried to bring back a gangster junkie unless they just happened to be stealing her corpse for illegal Frankenstein experiments. “Then he asked how old I was. I lied, I said eighteen so he could take me away that day but my birthday wasn’t for another eight months. He could tell I was lying but he didn’t say anything just patted my hand and said he’d wait.” She said. “It’s not my fault I had a crush on him.” She added, burying her face deeper into his chest.  

         

          “He was nice to you. And he made you feel wanted.” Thane filled in the blanks and Shepard nodded.

         

          “It’d been a real time since someone made me feel wanted but… Everyone wants something. I got a home to live in but only if I let my adopted Family abuse me for my inheritance. I joined the Reds but I had to be useful to them. I… god I was a fucking mess.” The tears started the flow though they didn’t obstruct her words, not yet. “I asked Anderson if I had to sleep with him to get in. Because honestly, I didn’t believe him. And I was so fucking dumb and young and just wanted someone to pay attention to me I thought…” She squeezed her eyes tightly to replace the image of Anderson with starburst of colors. But it didn’t work, all she could see was the look in his eyes when he’d heard her proposition. Disgust. “He said no, and then put another blanket on me and said he’d be back to the next day. I felt so ashamed I just cried. I thought he hated me. I didn’t think he’d come back.” Shepard said, the emotions of her youth all coming back in the tears flowing from her eyes. She started sobbing. All over her lost youth and her stupidity. She choked on her words and couldn’t finish her story for a bit.

          

          “But he came back?” Thane finally asked softly when the sobbing subsided. But it was less of a question, more of a way to stop the cycle of negative emotions swirling inside her. She needed to be reminded that it didn’t end there, and that it got better from that mortifying moment.

         

          “Yeah.” She laughed a little, she’d needed that reminder. “He came back every day till I was discharged. He explained that the implant the Reds gave me was a piece of crap and almost fried my head. And that they needed to do scans on my brain to make sure it was okay. He told me that- He told me that he wasn’t even a recruiting officer, he was just in town to see some friends because he was on leave and just happened to be there when I wrecked that car.” Shepard explained, and the memories were heavy and her head hurt from all of them. Or she was just tired and a migraine was setting in.

         

          “What happened after that?” Thane asked.

         

          “Like I said… I… tried to kill my adopted parents.” Shepard just laughed this part out. “I didn’t have any paper work. No ID. No birth certificate. I figured they’d just declared me dead and I had no way to prove I was myself. Anderson, he’d given me the location of a good detox facility to clean my system out enough to pass the Alliance drug tests on my birthday but I couldn’t check in. Not without something to prove I wasn’t a mass murder.” She took a deep breath in and then out.

         

          “I was frustrated. And angry. And I got high again, too high. I did a line of coke but then I thought about how mad Anderson would be at me and did another just to clear his fucking face from my head. And then went to their house. I cut them off from the outside world first. Like when I used to do B&Es when I was younger. Easier to fit through little windows.” She said.

         

          “Like Duct Rats.” Thane added.

         

          “Exactly.” Shepard nodded and continued. “But they didn’t have anything nearly as high tech as the city people. Guess they were more strapped for cash than I thought. If they were nicer to me I woulda let them have the money but… well.” She shrugged and visualized the next bit before speaking. They sat in silence for a moment, until Thane gently raked his blunted nails through her hair. It was an “it’s okay, I won’t judge you.” Signal. She needed that.

         

          “I broke open the door and anyone I saw, I pinned to the wall with my biotics. I still had the old implant in and I’d just gotten out of the hospital so I could taste metal in my mouth. I was bleeding from my nose for sure but… that could have been the coke tho.” She shrugged and squeezed her legs around Thane’s thigh to crack her hip. It was uncomfortable. This whole story was uncomfortable.

         

          “My Father” She said this with venom. “Called me Katrina to try and to connect me. He was begging for his life but he actually called me Katrina like that would touch my humanity or something.” She looked up at Thane, knowing she had to clarify why it was a problem then but not now. “I use it now because I couldn’t think of another name to sign my paper work with but back then, I hated being called that name. They only called me Katrina because they refused to say my real name. I damn near choked him to death.” She said, gripping her fingers and the room buzzed slightly with biotic energy. She took a deep breath in and out to keep from filling the room with blue again. She’d grown past that.

         

          “When he passed out I just dropped him on the ground and focused on my Mother.” She said. “I would have torn her head off but I needed my paper work and I wanted the information about my money. So I needed her alive.”

         

          “Did she tell you?” Thane asked, grimacing.

         

          “Oh yes. After I broke her hand.” Shepard said. She remembered the crunch of the woman’s bones under her sneakers. “But that’s not the worst part.”

         

          “Hm.” Thane said because what else could he say.

         

          “I took them up to their bedroom where they said my paper work was. I was going to just… tie them up and leave them there when I was done. But I heard…. Noises from the next room over. My old room.” She said. This time, the room did flicker blue. Thane pressed his face into her hair.

         

          “You don’t have to keep going, Siha.” His voice was soothing. She knew he’d never think less of her for chickening out or keeping a few secrets to herself but -  

         

          “No. No. Someone has to know. I never told anyone this… I just” She squeezed her hand so tightly the muscles ached. “I panicked. I wanted to get to my old room as fast as I could and I just tore down the wall that separated the rooms. And there was a girl, my age. My height. She looked like me. Well what I should look like if I wasn’t living on the streets. I was skinny with burned blond hair and dusty skin. She was pretty and soft with long black hair, pretty gold brown skin and I just started laughing. I just laughed and laughed until I almost choked. She was huddled in the corner, scared as all hell because some crazy bitch just wrecked her room and all I could think of was:  I’m not the one you should be scared of. It’s these fuckers. It’s these people!” Shepard’s face twisted into macabre smiled because if she let herself really feel the anger that was inside her, she’d destabilize the ship by punching a whole in the hull.

         

          “Siha, I think I understand.” Thane said, patting her head. He wanted her to stop because she was hurting herself with all the memories.  But she had to talk. The flood gates were open and she had to get the past out of her system before they became septic.

          

          “No. You don’t. They! I-I asked her. I asked the girl what her name was. You know what she said?” Shepard lifted her head to Thane in the darkness. She could see the quick flicks of his eyes watching her, studying her as an assassin would. “I’ll give you one guess.” She said brokenly.

         

          “Katrina…” Thane replied and Shepard laughed.

         

          “I was so… disposable to these people that they- they fucking took in some girl to pretend to be me. The non biotic doormat they could use for my inheritance! I…. slammed them through the floor. From the top floor to the ground floor and I think almost into the basement. I was sure they were dead. I only found out later from news reports they lived.” She laughed.

 

          “I’m lucky I didn’t kill them because I don’t even think Anderson could have saved me but fuck! I wanted them dead so bad I just- I couldn’t go back to finish them. I had to get that girl out there. She was there because of me, she was suffering and I just couldn’t take it. She wasn’t even from the US. They fucking kidnapped I found out. She finally told me after I’d dragged her out of the house and into a car.” She felt Thane twitch at the idea of Shepard and a car. Pure reflex. Anyone should have that reaction to Shepard behind the wheel so she just cackled.

 

          “I wasn’t driving.” She added and Thane laughed with her. It cut the tension of the story. Not by much but enough to make it palatable.

 

          “She was so scared but that was my fault she wouldn’t talk much. I was just a drugged out biotic tearing apart the only house she’d known since she was…. I don’t know. She was a little girl when they took her. She didn’t know all the details but when they met her, they asked if she wanted to live someplace nice. And she said yes. And they said her name was Katrina and that they were going to get on a plane. She didn’t get to say goodbye to anyone. I think she was an orphan too. But … by the time we got to the police station I just shoved her in there and left.” Shepard swallowed hard, her throat felt sore like she’d been vomiting which was basically what happened. Emotional vomit. Word vomit. Her stomach felt so much lighter getting rid of all that.

         

          “Siha, it’s okay.” Thane said, rubbing her back and pulling her into his chest again. She sunk into the cool smoothness of his scales and rested her hot face there to dull the heat that had built up in her eyes.

         

          “It wasn’t. I’m not…” She said softly, muffled by his chest. “I never dealt with any of this. I went to rehab. Did what I had to do to get out and clean. I only ever talked about my parents death. They seemed satisfied to see a few tears so to them I made a breakthrough and was cured. And then I found Anderson. I had asked for help for a place to stay till my eighteen birthday. I was hoping it was with him to be honest, stupid crush, but he didn’t live in my city.” She sighed a little, just to calm her nerves.

 

          “Should I be concerned with your attraction to Anderson?” Thane joked and she laughed.

 

          “Shut up.” She snorted and continued her story. He did have a female friend there that I crashed at till my birthday. I almost fucked that up tho. I stole from her and stayed out too late. And I drank sometimes.  I thought she’d kick me out but she just call Anderson.” She smiled. “He chewed my ass out and when he thought I’d had enough he put on his good cop badge and promised to write me more until I joined. That pacified me until the paperwork was done.”  

         

          “I shipped out on my birthday. And I just…. I didn’t want to be called Katyayani anymore. I had… so many bad memories with that name. I don’t know why I decided Katrina. I fucking hated that name. But it was the only one I could think of that wasn’t my birth name.” She said, running her fingers through her hair again.

         

          “Why did you pick Shepard?” Thane asked and that was a logical question. She couldn’t, even if she tried, remember the last name to her adopted family. She never tried.

           

          “My mom was ex-catholic but I knew the Bible just as well as I knew the Vedas and the like.” She said and sighed. “I remembered Moses… He became a Shephard to a flock of animals at one point and then to his people. I honestly could have picked any other bible person but I like how he was just a nobody who had dead parents and shitty adopted parents. So I picked Shepard.” She shrugged and sighed again. Well yawned. She was tired. All that emotional dumping was draining.

         

          “That does make sense. Who’ve have thought you would do such great things under that name later one.” Thane said and Shepard laughed again. “What?”

         

          “Katyayani was a Goddess. She was created to destroy a great demon. My dad knew but I didn’t want any of this. But I guess it’s destiny, you know. I even picked a named inspired by another great religious figure. Just lucky that way.” Shepard nuzzled her face deeper into his chest, rubbing her itchy nose in a way that made his scales lift slighty for friction.

         

          “Well Great Destroyer or Holy Shephard, I know my family did not name me after a tissue.” Thane lifted her head with his thumb and she laughed.

         

          “Sorry.” Shepard kissed him gently before resting her head back on his chest. She was silent for a while before she spoke. “Thane…”

         

          “Hm?” Thane inclined his head lower to hear her.

         

          “I’m tired. And I… I need to get help.” Shepard said. It was the first time she’d said that. She’d asked for help for a battle or help for a mission. But she never got help for herself. Officer Daminika was the first person that ever helped her and Anderson next after. And she sure as shit had disappointed them both with her actions. A little over forty and sometimes she still felt like the little lost girl who needed saving.

         

          “Is there anything I can do?” Thane asked, pressing his lips into her hair. “I’ll help anyway I can.”

         

          “Thank you, I just. For right now, I think I need meds.” That sounded dirty. She didn’t want to think of anything being wrong with her head but so many years of untreated trauma, half of that trauma she’d quarantined off in her head, something had to be broken up there. “I don’t think positive thinking is going to do the trick anymore… I just.. You won’t think badly of me if I start taking medicine right?” She asked.

          

          “I- Siha no.” Thane said and Shepard was caught off guard by how tightly he held her. He even pinned her to the bed with his body, burying his face into her neck. His weight made her body crack but she loved it. Needed it. She squeezed him tightly and he squeezed her more.

          

          “You’re the bravest woman I know, Siha.” His voice was just above a whisper but his lips were right at her ear.  “I could never think less of you for doing something that must be so hard for you. As long as my body draws breath, I will support you.” He lifted his head, just enough to give them some space in the darkness.

         

          Shepard closed that space quickly with a kiss. One she needed after such an emotionally trying night and day, and week and month and year and decade. She parted her lips just enough to let her tongue graze against his lower lip and he responded with a sharp hiss before deepening the kiss, his fingers wrapping around the covers of her naked body. She expected him to open the blankets but he stopped, and pulled away, and looked down at her for a moment before speaking. 

         

          “Is that what you want right now?” Thane asked, again, his eyes flickered to find the right answer.

         

          She could have asked him for anything in that moment and he would have given it to her. Too make love until everything stopped hurting. For something to eat since it’s been far too long since she ate anything. To take one of the smaller Shadow Broker ships to Earth and hunt down her previous family. Anything. But she sighed and shook her head. 

         

          “No.” She said with an exhausted smile. It would have been nice but… that’s not what she really needed. And she didn’t want to have sex with Thane as if she was just masturbating her stresses away. That wouldn’t have been right.

         

          “What do you want me to do, Siha?” Thane asked.

         

          “Just… hold me okay.” Shepard said, rolling over on her side under him and patting the space behind her back.

         

          “Of course.” He said as he took up the position of the big spoon behind her. He pulled her close by his arms and wrapped his long legs around hers. She settled against his body, finding a comfortable spot in his arms before he tightened his grip on her even more. If she wanted to move, she couldn’t. That’s just how she wanted it.

         

          “Thank you…” She said softly. “I’m going to talk with Chakwas in the morning, okay.” She added and felt Thane nodding behind her head.

         

          “Would you like me to escort you there?” He asked.

         

          “I’ll be fine. Just don’t tell anyone okay.” Shepard said as if she didn’t know Thane. But connecting back with her childhood brought back old feelings of paranoia and fear. She’d have to work on those as well.

         

          “I’d never do such a thing.” Thane said, though there wasn’t any hint of being offended in his voice, just soft affirmation. “Get some sleep. I’ll be here when you wake up.” He pressed his hand over her eyes playfully until she laughed.

         

          “Okay. Okay. I’m kinda sick of sleeping though. Just so you know.” She said but settled her head into his pillows. They didn’t smell like anything. Must have been another assassin thing. Thane never had a smell.

         

          “What’s a few more hours.” Thane said, and yawned. She’d forgotten she woke him up out of his sleep to come in and unload her past. She felt a little guilty for that so she settled in and shut her eyes.

         

          Sleep didn’t come easy. Sleep never came easy. But this time it wasn’t phantom pains and anxiety and heart racing fear from the confusion in her head. It was just that she’d slept already and wasn’t tired. She laid their for Thane’s sake, knowing he wouldn’t sleep until she did. No matter how slow he tried to get his breathing, she knew he was still awake. He wouldn’t have clenched and tightened around her at every little jerky movement she made if he was sleeping.

         

          But it finally came. Who knows how long into laying beside him but his touch did help so it couldn’t have been too long. All she hoped  was that her dreams didn’t pick up back in her childhood. Lucky for her, she got her wish. Because that’s just how dreams were.

         

          In her last dream of the night, she rolled around on a snow covered field with Elcor speaking Shakespeare as Thane ran his long fingers up and down her body. Strange though- Normally those dreams included threesome or foursome scenes but maybe the dreams she had before must have depleted her imagination and this was only just an olive branch from her mind. Or that’s how she’d interpret it later. Dreams were mysterious and random like that so it was only by chance it hadn’t picked up after she officially joined the alliance. And when she signed her name as Katrina Shepard for the first time instead of her Birth Name.

         

          That birth name, she’d rationalized, belonged to the only parents she had on earth that loved her. And she’d decided to leave it there with them. It was a nice piece of sappiness that cost her bits of her past since she’d compartmentalized all the damage she’d experienced under that name.

         

          No matter what she did though, no matter what she named herself, she’d always be that child back on earth. She’d always have a connection with “that girl” who lived a horrid life on Earth and escaped because she was young and in love and had a crush on the older Alliance officer who saved her. On Akuze she’d been the sole survivor of a Thresher Maw attack but she’d always be the girl that slept in a crack house on the cot in the corner with a bunch of other kids. On Eden Prime she would have been the woman that took in the Prothean Beacon and became the central piller of the universe’s salvation but she was also the little girl that realized she was so disposable to her adopted parents that they replaced her with some kidnapped child just to get money. And on Virmire she lost Ashley but on Earth, she lost Vinni.

         

          Some people would say the trauma she dealt with was all in her head and that’s true. It was! Because her brain was in her head and it was a damaged organ just like any other. Bit of neglect here, lots of sedatives there, sprinkle in starvation, a dash of cocaine and one deep fried and defective biotic implant and you’ve got the recipe for a brain swimming in a barely palatable stew of chemicals out of whack for a long time and needed help to properly function.

         

          The Omega 4 Mission had just knocked her brain’s clothespinned and rubber banded together chemical balance drastically to the left and now it needed help. Not just good thinking and adrenaline and powering through it. She couldn’t do that anymore. The only thing strong enough to get her out of bed most days was a violent need to use the bathroom and she couldn’t count on biological need to piss to keep her motivated any longer.

         

          So the next morning she’d talk to Dr. Chawkas. It would be awkward and a long time coming. She might even be upset with Shepard for keeping that information from her for so long. As both a friend and the doctor charged with keeping her fit and healthy. But it would happen. And Chakwas would give her the medication she needed to get out of her depression. It wouldn’t solve all her problems of course. No mental health medication did that. But she was Commander Katrina Shepard. And she was also Commander Katyayani Shanali. And she was sometimes Commander Blue. But she knew, both in her life Before Alliance (B.A.) and After Alliance (A.A.), she was a fighter. So that’s was the easy part.

         

          The hard part was getting out of bed and moving through the world. But she had support for when she faltered. Like Thane.  Thane laid behind her and held her as she slept. And he was in her dreams as well and -  Well, her dreams entered into the weird territory (As if Shakespeare Elcor weren’t weird) and tree vines gripped her limbs gently and restrained her while Dream-Thane sucked down on her clit.  But she had other support, she knew that, but she was sleeping. So she didn’t think about that support. Her brain put that support there in her weird dream though. Another set of hands on her body slid rough hands up her thighs and who was that? – she didn’t remember. It might have been important but that’s how dreams were. When she woke the details slipped through her fingers quickly and she’d only remember that four hands, two of them for certain belonged to Thane, worked over her body in her dreams. She’d be late to talk to Chakwas since she asked Thane to jog her memories when they were both awake.

         

          So back to the facts earlier. Katrina Shepard = Katyayani Shanli. That was still true so.

         

          Check

         

          Katrina Shepard saw Katyayani Shanli as a different person. Not so true anymore. It would take a time to merge the pasts again since the divide was only a mental one. But for her to heal she had to come to terms with this fact. So let’s see,

         

          We can put a maybe there.

         

          And the third fact. That her dreams were random and had no anthropomorphized urgency with the express purpose of helping Shepard feel better. That was still true but honestly, who knows. Shepard had the luck of a woman cursed by a witch but kissed by an equality powerful but good witch that just wanted what was best for her. One bad thing happened and another good thing happened right after. Just enough to keep her alive and grow stronger but not enough to give her a fucking vacation every now and again.

         

          It was random. So a check there. But maybe someone way back  in her destiny had set up the sequence of events so that she’d be laying in bed with the man she loved, (Did she love him? She’d said it was too soon to call it love yet, but that was just classic Shepard, lying to herself as always. She loved him dearly.) and making the first steps to get her life together. That meant someone could have decided that the sex dream she had where scaled and tattooed hands caressed her body was the perfect balance to the ones about her childhood abuse.

         

          But the question of if Shepard was gently pushed and nudged by godly intervention or cosmic design or unholy good luck, that was a debate for another day, after she’d had her meds and coffee. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was too fucking long. It’s longer than Fear of Possible Nonbeing by 10,000 words! I cut big chucks out of the fic tbh so that it wouldn’t go over the 9 chapters and this is going to be so damn long! This isn’t even the LONG fic of the Series but I really wanted to talk about my Shepard’s childhood. I talked about her race and her name and her weird relationship with her name, a little bit, but not enough for my oversharing ass!  
> I ended up making race important in Stars Make Me Choke so I figured I needed to pull the trigger full hog so that’s why so much of this chapter deals with the racial trauma she’s dealt with as a kid. And the fact that the Ten Street Reds became a pro-human semi-terrorist group after she’d left seemed kinda poetic to write about race as well. She found a place she could be herself (Even if it was under a pseudo-name and changed hair) only for it to be a racist group. Just fun times!  
> Next chapter is WAY WAY WAY MORE FUN. If the first two chapters were rough, know that it’ll get a lot more fun. Think :D Laser Tag *pew pew pew*   
> Mini Summary:  
> Katrina Shepard was born Katyayani Shahali but after her parents died, her parent’s coworker took her in order to get her inheritance when she turned eighteen. But because they couldn’t deal with her being a little Punjabi/Filipino girl, they treated her badly because of her race and because she refused to play nice with their abuse. She ran away, joined the Reds and after that she ended up joining the Alliance after be saved from arrest by a young Anderson. After she joined the Alliance she purposefully forgets her past, takes the new name of Katrina Shepard and leaves her old life on earth and repressed a lot of it. So much so that it causes her mental distress. So she relives the abuse through a mix of dreams and retelling the story to Thane and decides to she’s going to get on anti-depressant medication because her blue moods are toooooo blue.

**Author's Note:**

> So I've got a pretty clear idea where I've wanted this series to go (Finally) and it's basically just my own desire to get some more backstory as far as the mental health of these damn characters. 
> 
> This though def wasn't the story I had planned that I said I was gonna do in "Fear of Possible Nonbeing" but I do like the way it's going.  
> This is gonna be a long one so instead of writing it all out first I'm gonna post it chapter by chapter. Hopefully one every 1 or two weeks. 
> 
> This whole fic as I work on it will def be about her finding ways to cope with depression on a ship that's not really equipped. Now I don't have depression (I have PMDD and Depression associated with my ADHD but those are fleeting and not really as sustained as depression or dysthemia) so if you guys have an pointers about the writing on this, lemme know. Just depression on it's own isn't my wheel house so I def could use references.  
> There will be some fun moments and like the spoiler tags I'm popping the cork on the OT3 so be prepared!
> 
> For my art check out my Art Blog @ 8-Legs.tumblr.com and my art twitter @8_L3gs (I post on my twitter more often and sooner than tumblr because the tumblr site is actually HOT GARBAGE they pay their coders REAL money to fix their garbage site!


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